Turkey Mulls Strict Net Bill

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Turkey Mulls Strict Net Bill

ANKARA, Turkey – A media bill to go before the Turkish parliament Tuesday could cripple the Internet industry, harm the nation's struggling economy and hobble free speech on the Web, observers say.

The bill would expand already stringent regulations on all forms of media and would require websites to submit two hard copies of pages to be posted on the Internet to a government agency for prior approval.

It also would require those who wish to open a website to obtain permission from local authorities, and to inform them every time the site is changed.

Those who don't comply or are found in violation could face fines ranging from about $95,000 to $195,000, enough to financially devastate most Web content and service providers in a country where per capita income is less than $2,200.

The legislation comes at a time when European Union-hopeful Turkey is struggling to meet Brussels' political criteria for membership, including overhauling its often dismal human rights record and expanding civil liberties.

Dozens of journalists, politicians and intellectuals have been jailed under already draconian laws curbing free speech, and some fear vagaries in the proposed legislation could be used as tools for political prosecution.

The burdens proposed in the bill would cause an exodus of Turkish websites abroad and deal a major blow to content provision and Internet expansion, said Savas Unsal, CEO of Superonline, Turkey's biggest ISP with 950,000 dial-up and 2,500 corporate subscribers.

Unsal said a lack of Turkish language content would further widen the nation's digital divide in favor of the rich, who are educated enough to take advantage of the Internet in English.

"We don't want to provide access to just the elite," Unsal said. "We want the government to let us do our jobs and open the gates to technology and the future."

The bill focuses mostly on print and broadcast media, Unsal said, and the Internet provision was tacked on as a result of e-mails and Internet news critical of the leaders of the nation's three-party coalition government.

"It was a quick and dirty job done by people who don't understand the Internet or what they're asking," he said.

Unsal also said the bill is incompatible with Turkey's European Union membership bid, which requires more press freedom than exists under current law.

European Union representatives have said the bill would harm democracy, and that it runs counter to the government's publicly stated goal of loosening the country's constitutional restrictions on speech and expression.

The bill was killed last year by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who blasted it in his veto statement, saying parts of the proposed law were not "compatible with democratic traditions, basic rights and freedoms or constitutional principles."

If parliament members pass the bill again without change, though, Sezer's hands will be tied. He'll have to accept the law, and his only recourse will be to refer it to Turkey's constitutional court.

The court's decision could take from a few months to a few years, hampering Internet growth in a country where Unsal says it already has been slowed by economic crisis.

There are between 195,000 and 210,000 active websites in Turkey, and there are jokes within the industry about the truckloads of paper that would have to be submitted for approval each morning if the law is passed and enforced, Unsal said.

Under the law, the paper-laden trucks would be rolling toward the offices of the Supreme Board of Radio and Television RTUK, the agency that would be responsible for enforcement if the bill is made law.

Last month, RTUK ordered CNBC-e, a Turkey NBC affiliate, to suspend broadcasts for two days, one for airing The Game starring Michael Douglas.

But even RTUK's chairman, Nuri Kayis, is alarmed about the bill's potential impact on the Internet sector, and said it would have a negative effect on Turkey's already troubled economy.

"Internet publishing should be regulated by a special law," Kayis said in a recent letter to Sezer.

"With this law's passage, Internet sites will start using foreign ISPs because official supervision will create an impossible situation."

Another criticism of the law is that it is too vague. For example, it seeks to ban the airing of "pessimism" by all forms of media, and its provisions could be interpreted as applying to chat rooms and telephone text messages.

Dogan Ozgodek, a lawyer who teaches business law, banking and finance at Ankara's Bilkent University, said if the bill is made law, it might not be practical to enforce it for all websites.

Ozgodek agreed with Unsal that the government may choose selective enforcement. He said it's possible that only a small group of suspect websites would be targeted if the law is passed.

"If it is a news portal, it will change 24 times a day. How will they enforce that?" Ozgodek asked.